As the American military extends its stay in postwar Iraq, the risks of political and social friction will rise. Inevitably, there will be clashes; protests erupted in May, for example, when soldiers searching for troublemakers in one town intruded on unveiled women. To keep the occupation of Iraq from ending in bitterness, American officials will have to reach out to residents both economically and politically.

To that end, they might want to consider the long-term occupation of another place where Americans haven't been universally welcomed: Okinawa. This island witnessed the bloodiest battle of World War II, losing a third of its population. The American military administered the island until 1972, when it reverted to Japanese rule. Today, 24,000 American troops are stationed there, and the military occupies one-fifth of the land.

There is a tradition of antimilitarism on the island, fed in part by the horrors of the Battle of Okinawa, and there is an active movement to evict the American troops. Yet most islanders get along well with the service members, and anti-American violence is rare. Three important lessons can be drawn from Okinawa for the American presence in postwar Iraq.

First and most obvious, commanders must do everything possible to stop criminal or just plain disorderly conduct by American personnel. Military officials on Okinawa realized the importance of this when protests arose in 1995 after three servicemen raped a 12-year-old Okinawan girl. The officials responded by establishing intensive educational campaigns that instilled the importance of good community relations in service members and their families. Personnel are now checked for drunkenness as they enter and leave the bases, and unarmed patrols in areas where G.I.'s socialize discourage bad behavior.

These measures appear to be helping: the military says American personnel and their families commit 1 percent of the crimes on the island, even though they are 4 percent of the population. And while protests against the bases continue, tensions have eased considerably since 1995.

While it's vital to discourage crime, it's also important to be seen as an actively beneficial presence. The second lesson of Okinawa is that the United States should try to contribute to the local economy, and to spread its largess.

American bases in Okinawa provide thousands of jobs to locals. The Americans are consumers too, keeping small businesses afloat. The islanders who lease the land for the bases collect above-market rents, and local governments get public works money from Tokyo as a side payment for bearing the "basing burden." That means a critical mass of Okinawans is reluctant to see the American bases disappear. To build goodwill in Iraq, officials should ensure that many different local interests profit from the American presence.

The third lesson is that American officials should establish strong lines of communication with the local authorities, not just with national officials - especially if, as on Okinawa, they represent a distinct ethnic group. To give islanders more of a voice, there is a tripartite committee for Okinawan, American and Japanese officials to discuss base-related matters. In Iraq, community representatives must likewise be included in base negotiations, especially in the Kurdish north and Shiite south.

As part of these efforts, a vigorous volunteer program like the one on Okinawa - involving everything from teaching in local schools to assisting the disabled - can help convince residents that American troops are on their side. Rebuilding security will be the greatest long-term challenge in postwar Iraq. Learning from the United States experience on Okinawa can help ensure the success of the Iraqi occupation, enabling the troops to come home all the more quickly.

George W. Bush wants Americans and the world to believe that the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime two months ago represented a defeat for tyranny and a victory for liberty. No one has devoted more words to framing regime change in Iraq in these terms than the president.

In the debate leading up to the war, Mr. Bush and his administration focused primarily on Iraq's acquisition of weapons of mass destruction and the threat they posed to the US to justify military action. After military victory, however, Bush has emphasized the larger objective of promoting liberty in Iraq and the greater Middle East, especially because the search for weapons of mass destruction has produced such limited results. This mission statement for Iraq echoes convictions Bush stressed in every major foreign policy speech given since Sept. 11.

The president, however, has one big problem in pursuing this foreign-policy agenda. Few believe he is serious. Around the world, many see an imperial power using its military might to secure oil and replace anti-American dictators with pro-American dictators.

At home, isolationists in both the Republican and Democratic parties shudder at the folly of another Wilsonian mission to make the world safe for democracy.

Both at home and abroad, observers of Bush's foreign policy are confused by the mixed messages it sends. Was the war against Iraq undertaken to eliminate weapons of mass destruction or to spread liberty?

Bush faces an even more daunting challenge in making his commitment to democracy-promotion credible - the perception of hypocrisy. Bush has shown more concern for bringing freedom to Afghanistan and Iraq than to Pakistan or Saudi Arabia.

If Bush is truly committed to a foreign-policy doctrine of liberty-promotion, none of these criticisms is insurmountable. But they must be addressed. Especially now, with end of war in Iraq, what Bush says and does will define the true contours of his foreign-policy doctrine. Is it a liberty doctrine? Or does the language of liberty camouflage ulterior motives?

We will know that Bush is serious about promoting liberty if he credibly commits to four important tasks.

First, and most obviously, he must devote intellectual energy and financial resources to securing new regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq that, if not full-blown democracies, at least show the potential for democratization over time. To date, the record of achievement in both places is spotty. Bush has to keep these two countries at the top of his agenda, making regime construction as important as regime destruction. If democratizing regimes do not take hold in these countries, then Bush has no credibility in promoting liberty elsewhere.

Second, if Bush is serious about his stated mission, then he must give more attention to developing, funding, and legitimating the nonmilitary tools for promoting political liberalization abroad. The Marines cannot be used to promote democratic regime change in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, or Uzbekistan. Wilson had his 14 points and Truman his Marshall Plan. Kennedy created the Alliance for Progress and the Peace Corps. Reagan started the hugely successful National Endowment for Democracy. Bush needs to lend his name to similar grand initiatives.

Third, in future speeches, Bush must flesh out the next phase of his liberty doctrine by explaining his priorities. Even the most powerful country in the world cannot bring liberty to every person living under tyranny all at once. But the president does owe the American people and the world a clearer game plan. It is no accident that Bush has given top priority to promoting democratic regime change in places where autocratic regimes were also enemies of the US. Fine, but what principles guide the next moves? There are also countries in which the promotion of political liberalization at this time could actually lead to less freedom, not more. What are the criteria being used to identify such places? To win supporters to his mission, Bush must present a rationale for the next phase of democracy promotion.

Fourth, even if the US does not have the capacity to promote freedom everywhere all the time, the president can make his commitment to liberty more credible if he develops a consistent message about his foreign-policy objectives, no matter what the setting. Words matter. Advocates of democracy living under dictatorship can be inspired by words of support from an American president. They can also become frustrated and despondent when the American president refrains from echoing his liberty doctrine when visiting their country. For instance, Bush's failure to speak openly about democratic erosion on his recent visit to Russia was a big disappointment to Russian democrats.

Some will always believe that the US is just another imperial power, not unlike the old Soviet Union, Britain, France, or Rome, exploiting military power for material gains. But for others of us who want to believe that the US has a nobler mission in the world, we are waiting on the president to give us signs of a long-term credible commitment to promoting liberty abroad.

As the going gets rough in Iraq and budgets deficits bloat in this country, the president may be tempted to let his doctrine of liberty morph into a smaller doctrine of stability.

Critics of the American-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq cited the violation of state sovereignty as their chief concern. Invoking the United Nations Charter, opponents of these wars warned that American violation of Afghan and Iraqi sovereignty was illegal, immoral, and threatening to international order.

Forty years ago, these defenders of sovereignty would have been promoting sovereignty as a powerful battering ram for destroying empires and undermining the legitimacy of colonization. Eventually, empire became an illegitimate and extinct form of government; the hope was that acquiring state sovereignty would be the first step toward popular sovereignty. People living in colonies could choose their rulers only after shedding their colonial masters. Decolonization and democratization were to go hand in hand.

Today, however, the champions of sovereignty have become the conservatives. We should respect sovereignty, but it should not trump all other norms all the time. Defending Afghanistan's state sovereignty in 2001 or Iraq's in 2003 meant defending the wretched Taliban and Saddam Hussein. Both the Taliban and Hussein seized "sovereignty" by using brutal force.

In speeches justifying these wars, President George W. Bush proposed a liberty doctrine, which places the sovereignty of individuals above the sovereignty of the state. According to Bush, the sovereignty of regimes elected by their people cannot be violated. But those regimes not so constituted are illegitimate. Like those who embraced sovereignty as the intellectual counter to empire a half century ago, Bush embraces liberty as a weapon against dictatorship.

This liberty doctrine is not new. American presidents have sporadically deployed armed force to promote liberty in international politics. With his decisive actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush has given new impetus to the idea of promoting democratic regime change abroad.

Bush actively promoted democratic regime change in places ruled by dictators' threatening the United States. He did not start by dethroning despots loyal to American interests. The real test of his commitment to this doctrine will be his passion for deploying nonmilitary means for the cause of liberty in places such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Russia.

The American people are unlikely to support another preemptive war in the name of democracy. Even if Bush remains committed to this new doctrine, others in his administration, in his party, on Capitol Hill, and in other strategic countries are less interested in the project. As the going gets rough in Iraq and budgets deficits bloat in this country, the president may be tempted to let his doctrine of liberty morph into a smaller doctrine of stability.

Such a reversal, however, will vindicate the champions of sovereignty and delegitimize the American-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. President Bush, therefore, must back up his rhetoric with long-term strategies for securing democracy. If he fails, these wars will have been wasted opportunities and be remembered instead as examples of using U.S. military might for U.S. material gain. If Bush stays the course and builds a bipartisan domestic coalition, then just maybe-forty years down the road-dictatorship will follow the same fate as empire and become an extinct form of government.

To most analysts of international affairs, whether based in London, Moscow or Washington, President Vladimir Putin's behavior during the run up to the U.S.-led war in Iraq was very predictable. From a classic realpolitik perspective, Putin behaved rationally. Russia had concrete interests in the preservation of the status quo in Iraq, and U.S. military intervention threatened those interests.

For supporters of democracy, there is nothing more exciting or memorable than the fall of another dictator. The construction of a new political system, however, is a much more ambiguous process. The French still commemorate the storming of the Bastille, but the consolidation of democracy afterward took decades. Russian democrats at one point celebrated August 1991 as the month Soviet communism collapsed, but they stopped having parties later in the decade, when democracy's arrival still seemed far away. Navigating the gap between the fall of the old order and the formation of the new order is always difficult; it's especially dangerous when extremist movements and ideologies are added to the mix.

Iraq has it all: ethnic and religious divides, foreign troops, and returning exiles and revolutionaries ready to step in with an alternative vision for how to organize Iraqi state and society when those who first take power fail. Although Germany, Japan and France in 1945, or Haiti and the Balkans in the 1990s, have become the analogous regime changes of choice for many Western analysts, we would do well to add France in 1789, Russia in 1917 and 1991, Iran in 1979 or Afghanistan in the early 1990s as other historical metaphors that may help us understand Iraq today. These revolutionary situations shared several characteristics after the fall of the old order.

First, the collapse of the old regime left a vacuum of state power. The anarchy, looting and interruption of state services that we see in Iraq are predictable consequences of regime change. Second, after the fall of the dictator, expectations about "life after the dictator" exploded. People who have been oppressed for decades want to benefit from the new order immediately. The urgent and angry questions last week from Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi National Congress leader now back in Iraq, about why the Americans have not provided more relief faster is typical. The first leaders after the departure of the king in France, the czar in Russia or the communists in Eastern Europe knew Chalabi's situation well. Paradoxically, society's expectations inflate at precisely the same moment when the state is least prepared to meet them. Third, the coalition that opposed the dictatorship dissolved. While the dictator was still in power, this united front embraced one ideology of opposition -- "anti-king," "anti-czar," "anti-shah" or "anti-communist." In doing so, these coalitions consisted of economic, political, ethnic and religious forces with radically different visions for their country after regime change. Unity ended after the dictator fell. In Russia, Bolsheviks and liberals in 1917 and nationalists and democrats in 1991 went their separate ways. In Iran in 1979, Islamic leftists, liberals and militant clerics celebrated their shared goal of removing the shah. Just a few years after the collapse of the old order, many of the coalition partners who brought down the shah were out of power or in jail. Soon after the Soviet puppet regime in Afghanistan fell, the anti-Soviet coalition forces were killing each other.

The Iraqi opposition today consists of exiled liberals and generals, Kurdish nationalists, Shiite and Sunni clerics, Islamic fundamentalists, a smattering of monarchists and the unknown local leaders throughout the country who have quietly provided comfort to opponents and passive resistance to Saddam Hussein's totalitarian regime. From other regime changes, we should assume that this united front against Hussein will no longer be united after Hussein. The combination of a weak state, soaring expectations in society and factional fighting in the anti-authoritarian coalition gives rise to two dangerous "solutions." One is restoration. Living in anarchy, people want order. Who can provide order most quickly? Those who previously provided order. How can order be provided most quickly? By deploying the same methods used before. For both American officials governing Iraq and the Iraqi people, the temptation to settle for a new regime led by new leaders with autocratic proclivities grafted onto old state structures from Hussein's regime will be great.

But there is another, more sinister solution that can also gain appeal: the victory of the extremists. The end of dictatorship is a euphoric but ephemeral moment. When the new, interim government does not meet popular expectations, the radicals offer up an alternative vision to construct a new political (and often social) order. It is amazing and frightening how often they win. In February 1917 the end of Russian czarism seemed to create propitious conditions for constitutional democracy. Less than a year later, the Bolsheviks had seized power. In 1979 the first provisional government in Iran contained many prominent leftist intellectuals and even some liberals. No one today, however, remembers Mehdi Bazargan or Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr, while everyone knows the name of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the radical cleric who pushed these others aside to dictate his vision for Iran. The Taliban seized control in Afghanistan to end the years of anarchy after the collapse of the old order there.

In Iraq, this threat from revolutionaries -- that is, the terrorist wing of Islamic fundamentalism inspired by Osama bin Laden -- is now latent and below the radar screen, but real. For devotees of this world perspective, Iraq offers a ripe opportunity. Not only is the old state gone and expectations high, but the only authority in the country is, in their revolutionary discourse, an imperial occupying force of infidels. Vladimir Lenin and Khomeini would have drooled over such propitious conditions for revolution.

The third path between restoration and revolution is a long and bumpy one. Liberal, moderate grass-roots movements from below always take more time to emerge and consolidate than the autocratic forces of either restoration or revolution. To succeed in Iraq, they will need their U.S. allies for the long haul. Premature departure guarantees thugs in power at best and Osama bin Laden supporters at worst.

The writer is a Hoover fellow and professor of political science at Stanford University and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.